Texan among 5 accused of laundering cartel's money.

Updated 1:23 am, Monday, April 15, 2013

José Treviño Morales (with hand raised) is the main defendant in a trial involving laundering of Zetas cartel money in the U.S. horse-racing industry.

José Treviño Morales (with hand raised) is the main defendant in a trial involving laundering of Zetas cartel money in the U.S. horse-racing industry.

Photo: AP Photo/The El Paso Times, Rudy Gutierrez

Trial expected to show how Zetas operate

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A trial set to begin Monday in Austin promises an in-depth look at the Zetas drug cartel and the gang's reach into Texas, the Midwest and South America.

The chief defendant is José Treviño Morales, brother of the Zetas' brutal leader, Miguel Treviño Morales, who's a fugitive in Mexico. He'll be joined by four co-defendants, including Francisco Colorado Cessa, a Mexican businessman involved in the horse-racing industry but who made his money contracting for Mexico's state-owned oil company.

Their lawyers maintain their clients are innocent.

José Treviño owns a house in a Dallas suburb and a ranch in Oklahoma, where he raises quarter horses.

He and the other defendants are accused of laundering the Zetas' money in the U.S. horse-racing industry, but pretrial proceedings indicate that jurors will be given a broader view of Miguel Treviño's drug-smuggling and extortion operation.

Prosecutors moved to seize José Treviño's ranch, a co-defendant's ranch near Bastrop and hundreds of horses.

Miguel Treviño, who ascended to power last year when Zetas leader and founding member Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano was killed in Mexico, rules with another brother, Omar, as his right hand.

He oversees a criminal empire stretching from Chicago to Venezuela, according to court documents. The gang is based in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, the hometown of Miguel Treviño, who's known by his radio call sign, “El 40.”

Last year, a federal trial in Laredo of an accused Zeta hit man gave details of El 40's criminal operations from 2001 to 2008, as he went from small-time criminal to a major player in the Zetas, overseeing the smuggling of hundreds of pounds of cocaine and ordering killings on both sides of the border.

This week's trial will likely detail his operations since then as a drug lord commanding one of Mexico's two largest cartels, with police officers and corrupt politicians under his thumb.

The government also will lay out allegations that, through his brother José and straw purchasers, El 40 bought and raced quarter horses across the Southwest and used those transactions to launder money.

“I think that you will hear the prosecution talk about the Zetas, the way they operate in Mexico, the way they operate here in the United States, and the tentacles that go into Central America,” said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “I think that these trials serve to basically remove the cloak of secrecy of these drug-trafficking organizations. It's not only putting them behind bars, but it's basically removing the shroud of darkness that they love.”

Court records don't say who will testify for the government, but a search warrant affidavit claimed a trafficker based in Piedras Negras, Mexico, who worked for Omar Treviño, who goes by the call sign “El 42,” is cooperating with the government.

The informant, who isn't identified, and two of his underlings told agents about how the Zetas smuggled drugs to San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Chicago and smuggled millions of dollars of cash back to Mexico.

The informants also claimed that they were aware of interaction between Zetas leaders and some of the defendants going to trial, including José Treviño, something defense attorneys reject.

The affidavit also mentions that a founding member of the Zetas, a group that was initially composed of former Mexican special forces soldiers working for the Gulf Cartel, has turned federal informant and might testify at the trial.

Jesús Enrique “El Mamito” Rejón Aguilar, who was arrested after the February 2011 killing of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, was extradited to the United States last year and has been cooperating with the federal government.

He testified this year in the trial in Washington, D.C., of an accused Gulf Cartel trafficker, but went largely unnoticed in the media. He's likely the only founding member of the Zetas to ever take the witness stand in a U.S. courtroom, Vigil said.

Of the 19 people indicted in the case, four are fugitives and 10 have reached plea deals with the government. Most of the plea proceedings were kept secret.

The feds have already lost one of their witnesses. In a story last year that broke the allegations of the Zetas laundering money through quarter horses, the New York Times reported that one of El 40's horse buyers, Ramiro Villarreal, was cooperating with U.S. investigators. His body was found in 2011 in a torched vehicle near Nuevo Laredo.

David Finn, a Dallas lawyer for Jose Treviño, said he expects prosecutors to use information about the Zetas' drug trafficking and brutality to convince jurors that his client, a Mexican native who has become a U.S. citizen, is guilty by association.

“My client and his family are low-hanging fruit,” Finn said. “It's a political persecution because they can't get to his brothers in Mexico.”

In a motion to delay the trial, he said that a week before jury selection was scheduled to start, he received wiretap transcripts in which an unidentified man refers to “his brother” as being “clean, he's just an ordinary guy.” In the motion, Finn says he thinks that the “brother” is Jose Treviño and asks for more time to find the people on the phone call.

That motion was denied.

Lawyers for Colorado Cessa, the Mexican businessman; Jesus Maldonado Huitron, a lawful permanent resident and Austin-area home builder who if convicted could lose his ranch near Bastrop; and Fernando Solis Garcia, a horse-racing expert, have maintained their clients' innocence.